Portlandedhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com
A stranger in a strange land. Saying strange things.Tue, 16 Jan 2018 18:30:40 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngPortlandedhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com
Is Apple Really Skimming From Rentals To Pay for the Apple TV?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/avqX8EzKfdM/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/is-apple-really-skimming-from-movie-rentals-to-pay-for-the-apple-tv/#respondMon, 04 Feb 2008 00:09:46 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/?p=111It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here, but I’ve been roused from blog neglect.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball pointed out a Computerworld story by Seth Weintraub in which Weintraub accuses Apple of “subsidizing” the cost of the Apple TV with money skimmed from iTunes movie rentals. (No, really. When I say skimmed, I’m not trying to introduce hyperbole. He actually makes reference to Tony Soprano when describing the practice.)

The story received enough attention for Weintraub to address the Daring Fireball traffic directly, nastily adding

Also Valleywag, Gizmodo, Macrumors, and Mac Daily News among others have picked up this story and may have made it easier to understand for Mr. Gruber and his readers…

(Note that those sources simply link to or report on Weintraub’s story, without addressing his argument in a substantive way.)

In the comments, a number of people have pointed out that the article is kind of silly. Weintraub responded once stating that the commenter “managed to miss the point of the whole article,” and responded to additional comments with “See above.” It seems that the possibility that the article itself is a bit of a reach has escaped him.

I don’t think everyone’s just missed the point. There are a few reasons why rational people might draw a very different conclusion than Weintraub.

The Price Drop Isn’t U.S. Only

“Why did the US version price drop from $299-$399 to $229-$329 while the rest of the world still has to pay the same price for Apple TVs? … Apple is subsidizing the cost of the Apple TV hardware with movie rentals.” The problem with this conclusion is that price reductions are for the U.S. and Canada, despite the lack of rental content being offered in the Canadian iTunes store.

We’re Using iSuppli Numbers?

I don’t really want to debate the margins but we have to acknowledge that iSuppli’s numbers are at best educated guesses and at worst wildly inaccurate. Anyone can purchase a 160GB internal hard drive for at or near the prices iSuppli quotes — I suspect that Apple is doing much, much better.

Did We Expect Apple to Provide Movie Rentals at Cost?

Weintraub said in an update, “The point is the SUBSIDIZING Apple TV… Of course Apple deserves a cut of the products they sell.” He dismisses the sentiment that obviously Apple expected to make money from movie rentals, and thinks that perhaps capital letters will somehow make things more clear. But in the article he plainly makes the implication that even with music and video, Apple is merely trying to recover the cost of bandwidth.

Apple has always said that it made money on music and movies, just not very much. Movie rentals are no different — Apple is selling them at a profit. In other news, so does Blockbuster — the rentals aren’t there to improve margins on candy sales. Maybe this is a bit more complicated than Weintraub’s allusions to the game console market would allow.

Apple TV Isn’t the iPod, and Movies Aren’t Music

Weintraub seems to discount Apple’s approach based on the perceived dynamics of the music player market. With the iPod, there was a general belief that the store existed to provide content for the players and to create Apple lock-in.

(This belief isn’t necessarily supported by the facts, as reports have shown that most users’ experience mirrors my own — most of my music is ripped from my CD collection, and only slightly supplemented with iTMS purchases. The actual story is probably more complicated and related to risks associated with allowing another company to dominate the music download market.)

The movie download market has proven very different. Legal complications and DRM make ripping of movies far less common. There is no way to burn DVDs of purchased digital movies. And the market has demonstrated that there is limited appeal to viewing movies on one’s computer or media player. So where the iPod had massive back catalogs of music itching to be set free and an easy way to do that, the digital movie download/rental market desperately needs a simple way to get those movies to the living room television. And many companies have jumped in to try and create that mechanism.

Competition has heated up. There are some big players making a bid to deliver digital rentals to the family TV, including

A Netflix/LG partnership, with plans the Netflix download service with LG high definition DVD players and televisions,

And a number of solutions that can stream video to the television while serving other functions, like the Media Center PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Oh, We’re Talking About Made-Up Margin Numbers

“Of course, the exact amount that Apple pulls from the studios is a secret. I would guess that it is about $1 – $2 per movie…. The aggressive margins on TV content could very well be why NBC Universal dropped its iTunes relationship last year and why it took so long to get all of the studios signed up for movie rentals.” Here’s where Weintraub really seems to run off the rails — he says that no one knows what the margin is on rentals, makes a guess then cites that “aggressive margin” as a possible reason why Apple had trouble getting content.

It’s completely unfounded speculation that ignores a host of very real, very public explanations — NBC Universal wanted to force bundles on people, they wanted more flexibility to vary prices (higher or lower, depending on who’s telling the story — my guess is that the studios aren’t lining up to give me a deal) and that they’re trying to recapture control of how people can watch content with heavy DRM and forced ads on their website and Hulu. In fact, Weintraub’s supposition only makes sense if you buy into his premise — that Apple needs a 40% to 50% margin on movie rentals to pay for the Apple TV. It’s far more likely that Apple is getting the same or less than it does on music downloads, somewhere between 20% and 30%.

Simple Explanations are the Best

For me — and obviously other commenters on Weintraub’s blog — the logical conclusion is that Apple needs some broad adoption of the Apple TV if they’re going to gain any traction in digital movie distribution. The price cuts for the Apple TV (regardless of how much Apple is actually earning) are simply a smart business move to compete with a host of other solutions.

The VUDU is an especially strong offering and Apple needs to do something to address that. But they don’t need to find $70 to make up for the Apple TV price cut — the margins are likely larger than iSuppli suggests already, and even iSuppli says there’s some profit there. Maybe the confusion is that the margins aren’t as large as Apple’s computer hardware business. Did anyone expect them to be?

Weintraub’s conclusion that Apple must be “taking a bit off the top” is a puzzling non-revelation. The idea that Apple gets a portion of movie rental revenue is beyond obvious. And the idea that Apple needs to direct that money to boost the Apple TV margin? Weintraub never adequately explains why this would even be necessary — there’s never any suggestion that Apple is losing money on the Apple TV, just that the margin isn’t large enough.

Unless Weintraub has some inside information on what Apple’s margin expectation was when they launched what Jobs called a “hobby,” why is it so hard to consider that they’re just trying to price it competitively and create a compelling ecosystem of products?

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]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/is-apple-really-skimming-from-movie-rentals-to-pay-for-the-apple-tv/feed/0TomApple TVhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/is-apple-really-skimming-from-movie-rentals-to-pay-for-the-apple-tv/Yoko’s Is Some Good Sushi!http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/L4NtNzRu9gY/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/yokos-is-some-good-sushi/#respondWed, 26 Sep 2007 02:06:55 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/yokos-is-some-good-sushi/I went out looking for some sushi last night. I’m typically a creature of habit. We’ll hit up Sushiland and watch the sushi go round and round; it’s fast and not too expensive, and the sushi’s OK. (You can even find me in the list of plate champions!)

But I’d been past Yoko’s several times and always wanted to try it out. Last night we did. It was awesome. We waited about 20 minutes to get a seat in the cramped little place. The food was great. The freshwater eel was some of the best I’ve had anywhere. The rolls might (might!) have benefitted from a little less rice, but I loved everything I had.

Service was typical Portland. Citysearch paints the sushi chefs as chatty but we found them the opposite. My questions were answered grudgingly and I wish the guys were a little more gregarious. They did send everyone off with a friendly wave and thanks, though. The servers were very nice but could have checked in with us a few more times. These are relatively small complaints in Portland, though — service is usually pretty lackluster in this town.

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/yokos-is-some-good-sushi/feed/0Tomhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/yokos-is-some-good-sushi/How Often Do You Find An Awesome Gorilla Video?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/tSxNh-MS4AU/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/02/how-often-do-you-find-an-awesome-gorilla-video/#respondSun, 02 Sep 2007 20:28:13 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/02/how-often-do-you-find-an-awesome-gorilla-video/Not very often, that’s what I think! But here’s one, noted over at Daring Fireball.
]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/02/how-often-do-you-find-an-awesome-gorilla-video/feed/0Tomhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/09/02/how-often-do-you-find-an-awesome-gorilla-video/My Miserable iPhone Experience, Part 4 — A Happy Endinghttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/sdBQQo_bSUM/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-4-a-happy-ending/#commentsTue, 03 Jul 2007 03:02:57 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-4-a-happy-ending/Here it is — the resolution to my long road to AT&T’s network. You can check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 to see how I got to this point.

It seems my problem all stems from the fact that I took bad advice early on from an AT&T rep and activated my phone in Oregon. Unfortunately, mobile telecom is still mired in its landline origins. Area codes are still area codes tied to a specific geographic location.

Mobility creates problems. As frustrating as this experience has been, I’m not particularly angry about it. Businesses like AT&T want to know how much revenue they generate in a certain region. States want to collect taxes. Cities want 911 fees from residents paying phone bills. I’m sure the city of Chicago isn’t going to cut Portland a $15 check just because my billing address has been here for the last year.

In 2003, local number portability was mandated by the FCC for wireless numbers in metropolitan areas. It was never intended to create a lifetime phone number; the purpose was simply to reduce end-user switching costs between carriers within a market. AT&T’s porting system is just strictly enforcing the rules.

Still, I’m not big on rules. They don’t always make sense. There are countless laws still on the books that seem silly or bizarre today. Just because tax rules and government regulations haven’t kept up with the way society uses mobile technology, that certainly doesn’t mean that I have to play along and just deal with the major hassle of changing the phone number that all my business associates and friends use.

But now things appear to be fixed. I can make outgoing calls and caller ID shows them coming from my Chicago number. The transfer from T-Mobile appears to be under way. Here’s what happened:

First, if you haven’t activated yet and you’re living in a different region than your area code would indicate, try the trick laid out by AppleInsider.

It was too late for me — I’d already contacted AT&T and been advised to just activate the phone and port the numbers after. So I went to the AT&T store today and said that I needed a way to keep my iPhone — if I can’t move my number, I’m returning it. The AT&T guy was really nice — as everyone has been, even when they couldn’t find a way to help me — and wanted to help.

I discussed the AppleInsider tip and asked if he could move my account to Chicago so I could get the port to work, or perhaps I could cancel the account and just start over. He thought that I should call to cancel, where I’d be put through to a special group tasked with trying to hold onto departing customers. He said they’d ask why I was leaving and might be able to resolve the issue. (I’m guessing some of their compensation may be based on hanging onto customers — maybe this could tip the balance in my favor.) I asked if I’d need a new SIM card if I had to re-activate; he said I would and gave me one just in case.

I called AT&T and ended up speaking with a guy in the cancellations group (or whatever they call it). I kept getting put on hold as he tried to find out how to fix it. We had some false starts when he thought I was having a problem moving a Chicago AT&T number, and momentary panic when he said they couldn’t move the T-Mobile number. But he went back to it and eventually he put me through to a girl in relocations. She would help me with my move; she would then put me through to porting who would move my number over.

She also got a bit mixed up at one point. But she eventually found the right process, cancelled my new Oregon account, created a new Illinois account and linked it to the new SIM card. She transferred me to porting. He initiated the port, told me to put in the new SIM and connect to iTunes.

He didn’t think any re-activation through iTunes would be needed (he was wrong); by now I’d been through enough to cover my bases. I confirmed that if I did need to re-activate in iTunes, that I’d be selecting the option to use the iPhone with an existing AT&T wireless number.

We briefly discussed trying to port over my girlfriend’s number and completing the whole family plan thing, but agreed that’s best left for after my phone is up and running. We hung up. I’d been on the phone for an hour and forty-five minutes.

The iPhone recognized that the SIM had changed and insisted that I re-activate. I plugged into iTunes and things went smoothly, although I now got the option to add a data plan to my existing plan rather than select one of the iPhone plans. Now I’m just waiting for the port to go through.

There will still be some clean-up to deal with — who knows what’s going to come of the cancelled Oregon account, Illinois account created to receive the port, how I’ll get on the correct iPhone plan, and what will happen when I try to port over Diane’s number. But I think the worst is over and I’m keeping my number!

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-4-a-happy-ending/feed/1Tomhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-4-a-happy-ending/My Miserable iPhone Experience, Part 3http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/lc-Y4J3_sPQ/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-3/#commentsSun, 01 Jul 2007 17:40:13 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-3/I’m already wrestling with whether to return my iPhone, given the difficulties described in Part 1 and Part 2. Now I’m finding that I’m not getting some text messages. Nothing my girlfriend has sent from her T-Mobile phone has made it to the iPhone, even when replying to text messages from me. I tried sending a text message from my old T-Mobile phone and that never arrived, either.

Anyone else experienced problems on a new iPhone account with text messages coming from outside the AT&T network?

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-3/feed/7Tomhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-3/My Miserable iPhone Experience, Part 2http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/bLpe4J7RMV4/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-2/#respondSun, 01 Jul 2007 07:17:13 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-2/Yesterday, I did what a lot of people did — I stood in line to buy an iPhone. Here’s my bittersweet tale of the last 24 hours, and the story of why I may be taking my iPhone back. In Part 1, I talked about some of my purchasing experience and activation woes.

Using the iPhone

I’m happy with the iPhone and, like many others, feel that it lives up to most of its hype. I’ve found some things I love and a couple quirks that bug me.

Great Stuff

The iPhone has some built-in rings that are really, really nice. I think people are driven to annoying ringtones because the included rings are so obnoxious themselves. I’m using the Xylophone ring — if, for some reason, I can’t have my phone on silent, I don’t think it’ll bother anyone.

Despite the hand model scandal, the iPhone seems smaller than I expected. And it feels great. I think this is because the device is so slim — my Sony Ericsson P910i has almost exactly the same footprint but is thicker and feels a lot more awkward. The design of the iPhone is just fantastic.

The interface is great. Really great. I’ve found a couple spots where the lack of a traditional menu has left me puzzled about how to get back where I came from, but in general it’s very intuitive and easy to work with.

Most of all, the iPhone pretty much works as advertised. There’s not much I can add to that — people have covered the features and design to death. The keyboard works pretty well; I’m still adapting but think that I’m going to be fine with it. (I’ll note here that I’ve never been a high-speed texter; I’ll leave it to the Crackberry addicts to discuss the finer points of texting on the iPhone.)

Not So Great Stuff

EDGE really is painfully slow. I’m not super let down by this. I’ve been using GPRS with my Sony Ericsson P910i for a long time, so I didn’t have very high expectations. For me, I really find the iPhone to be unusable for Internet functions over the cell network. Mail, YouTube video, general web browsing — it all takes forever. This isn’t a dealbreaker for me. I didn’t expect to scour the web via EDGE. Wi-Fi performance is great and that’s when I’d be checking multiple mail accounts or looking up something on the web. (Although even Wi-Fi seems a bit slower than a normal Wi-Fi device. Maybe it’s just me.) And EDGE will be fine for a quick look at the weather or whatever.

I’ve run into some bugs. While browsing, I’ve been bumped several times to the iPhone’s main menu. And we’re not talking about pushing the boundaries of the web — even when using the built-in Google Maps link, I’ve had my page unexpectedly exit and the main menu appear. I’ve had the same thing happen in Mail while rendering messages with some large inline images. The phone’s even locked up once while rendering an image-heavy e-mail and I had to force it to restart. This is pretty disappointing, given some of Steve’s comments about how other phones lock up. Hopefully we’ll see a software update that addresses this stuff.

Apple placed a convenient silent mode switch right on the side of the iPhone. But in a decision I don’t understand, “silent” isn’t totally silent. I was at a restaurant and the waitress asked some questions about the iPhone. I was showing her the interface and how videos play and Ask a Ninja starting blaring out of the speaker of my “silenced” phone. Be forewarned — “silent” doesn’t appear to include any of the iPhone’s iPod functions.

The Podcasts item on the iPod is really for audio podcasts. Video podcasts show up in the podcasts list but playing them just gives you audio. To view the podcast, you need to go to Video where they’re lumped in with all other video content.

Multitouch isn’t always multitouch. Multitouch really works only in the specific examples that have been demonstrated — zooming in and out of photos, web pages or mail messages. When selecting something from a list or pressing a button, the iPhone only reacts to a single input. This isn’t a big deal; I’m not even sure what I expected here. I was just a bit surprised when I was scrolling through my contacts list (oh, that beautiful scrolling), placed my right thumb on the screen to stop the list, then tried to select the contact I wanted with my left index finger. That won’t work. Check out the photo at right. Even though my thumb isn’t over anything that could be selected, it’ll keep the iPhone from registering a touch with another finger. This has only been a problem because so much of the iPhone is screen — it limits how you can hold the iPhone while navigating.

I think that overall Apple’s done a great job with the iPhone. I don’t think any of these are more than minor quibbles; some will say that they can’t live without 3G and I’d agree that leaving it out is the iPhone’s biggest deficiency.

Porting My Phone Number

But wait! I’ve been playing with the phone but still haven’t dealt with my phone number. Here’s where the real disappointment comes in.

As I said in Part 1, I’ve been using my Chicago number here in Portland for over a year on T-Mobile. Before that, I’d used my AT&T Wireless number from metro DC in Chicago. So I called AT&T Customer Care and explained my situation. “I want to move over both numbers from my T-Mobile family plan to an AT&T iPhone family plan. Right now I have one iPhone that I just activated with a new number because I couldn’t move both numbers using iTunes activation.”

No, she said, you can’t do that online. You should have activated the additional line at the store.

But they weren’t doing any activation at the store. They told me I could do it all at home, and then I couldn’t, so I’m calling you.

Well, where is the second number going? You have to buy another phone and get a SIM card.

I have plenty of phones. I know I need a SIM card. Can we do the transfer and you can send me a SIM card?

She says I need a SIM card for the transfer. She asks what numbers I’m transferring and I give them to her. Your area code is in Illinois, she says.

I felt we were making progress. We had found something that we both agreed with 100%. My phone number definitely had an Illinois area code.

You’re in Oregon, she says.

Yes! Exactly! Now we’re really getting somewhere.

Well, you can’t do that, she tells me. That won’t work. You’re not in the same region.

But my phone works fine here. Everyone’s told me this won’t be a problem. Area codes seem kind of quaint — my phone rings no matter where I am. Everyone has this number!

I really don’t think we can do that. Let me see what we can do. Do you have an Illinois address? Maybe we can use that.

Now I do still have an address in Illinois. We could try that if necessary. But this all seems to be so ridiculous. And everyone has this number!

Eventually she comes back and gives me the bad news. They could probably port my number over but eventually AT&T would deactivate my account; it would be flagged because more than half my activity would be coming from “out of region.”

Out of region? What the hell’s that? My phone says I’m on an AT&T network. Isn’t it all AT&T?

Apparently it’s not all AT&T. She explains that there are five regions and a midwest phone number can’t be used for a western account. If I’m permanently in Oregon, I have to get a new number.

But how can this matter? What about people who travel all the time — when I was on the road, almost all my activity was business and took place when I was far from my home region. What does AT&T do to them?

I want to believe that some archaic regulations associated with wired telecom cause things like this. But since this isn’t based on state boundaries, I thinking that’s not the problem. “Regions” sound suspiciously like crappy corporate bureaucracy — we’ve got an org chart in place and we certainly can’t have somebody using a phone number that falls under Jack when the guy lives in an area that’s controlled by Bob.

So AT&T wants me to drop the number I’ve had for five years, that I’ve given to tons of friends, colleagues and clients. I’ve certainly had old clients call up after several years and need some help; they’ve been able to reach me because my mobile number is my number. The idea that it needs to change because I’m in a different location — well, does AT&T even understand what the “mobile” part of mobile phone means?

I’m going to call AT&T again on Monday and see if I can get someone else who can help me out. If they can’t, I need to decide the hassle factor associated with changing my number; I may have to return the iPhone and stick with T-Mobile.

Man, AT&T sucks.

UPDATE: AppleInsider seems to have the workaround for out of region number porting — spoof the porting system with your old address. I think I’ll try this on Monday with Customer Care.

So what about the rep’s ominous warning of deactivation? I didn’t have a problem with this “out of region” usage on AT&T 5 years ago — has anyone experienced this on Cingular? And I imagine that the people moving to a new state and keeping their old mobile numbers are legion. So is this an AT&T Customer Care bogeyman?

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-2/feed/0TomHolding the iPhonehttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-2/My Miserable iPhone Experience, Part 1http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/YL1uxQytG7A/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-1/#commentsSun, 01 Jul 2007 01:21:25 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-1/Yesterday, I did what a lot of people did — I stood in line to buy an iPhone. Here’s my bittersweet tale of the last 24 hours, and the story of why I may be taking my iPhone back. It’s also the story of how AT&T — even as it tries to make itself over as some kind of new hotness — remains at its heart a tired, stodgy member of one of the most hated industries in America, the cell phone carriers.

A Little Background

I’ve never really been for or against any mobile provider. They’re all bad. For a long time, my job involved a lot of travel and I’ve found that they all drop calls somewhere, they all have bad reception somewhere.

For context, we only need to discuss my last two carriers. I signed up with AT&T Wireless in 2000. I didn’t have any real problems and I had good experiences around the country and with AT&T’s roaming in the United Kingdom and France.

I relocated to Chicago and continued to use my old number (a Virginia number, just outside of DC) for a year. Then I moved into a new place and my new condo happened to be in an AT&T dead spot. I couldn’t get any real answers on how that might get fixed from AT&T, so I switched to T-Mobile because I could get a signal in my living room.

Now I live in Portland. I’ve been here for about a year and I’ve continued to use my Chicago mobile number. My girlfriend and I have a T-Mobile family plan and we’ve both kept the old numbers.

Buying the iPhone

The buying part went pretty smoothly. The line at the AT&T store wasn’t too long when we arrived around 4:15 — there were maybe 45 people ahead of us. The doors opened promptly at 6:00 p.m., AT&T brought people inside in an orderly fashion and things moved pretty fast. We were inside by 6:45 p.m.

I clarified a couple things about what I needed to do — I have a family plan at T-Mobile and will be bringing over both numbers to a new AT&T family plan, I said. No, we don’t need another phone; we’ll unlock the Motorola PEBL my girlfriend uses, use a phone from my previous stint with AT&T, or whatever. We’ve got a half dozen phones at home, most already unlocked.

I was told all activation will happen using iTunes. Sure, I can bring over both numbers. Yes, I can keep my Chicago numbers. I left happy, one iPhone in hand. The whole thing went well.

Activation Hell

Let me preface by saying that everyone I dealt with at both AT&T and T-Mobile were really polite and did their best to help me. They were well-informed, or they managed to find an answer with a minimal amount of time on hold. The voice mail systems were a pain, as always (I found T-Mobile’s more irritating), and it took time to get to the option for a person.

Activation didn’t go so well. I downloaded iTunes 7.3, plugged in my iPhone and it promptly appeared in my iTunes devices list. As a new AT&T customer, I had the following options:

1. Activate one iPhone now.
2. Activate two or more iPhones on an individual or FamilyTalk plan.

Huh. I don’t see the “create a family plan with one iPhone and one other number” option. OK, I’ll activate this as an individual plan and deal with getting the other number moved later.

So then I get the “Transfer Mobile Number” screen. I put in my number, my T-Mobile account number and my zip code. I’m told that the number can’t be transferred.

So I call the AT&T store. They refer me to the Customer Care line, who they say can help me with something like moving my Chicago number although my billing address is in Oregon. Customer Care sends me to the iPhone Activations Line, who tells me to call T-Mobile and find out why they won’t let my number transfer. T-Mobile sends my call to the transfer service center; after 15 minutes on hold I’m summarily disconnected.

OK, so I’ll just activate the phone and port the number later. I uncheck the little box, remove my number, my T-Mobile account number and my zip code, and proceed. Pick my plan, enter my iTunes login, add some additional info, submit… AT&T is processing my activation! It may take up to 3 minutes!

So I wait. Another minute. Finally!

“AT&T requires additional time to complete your activation. You will receive an e-mail when your activation is complete.”

What?! So now I’m checking e-mail like a lab rat pressing a button for more crack. That doesn’t seem to speed up the process. I call the AT&T iPhone activations line again and ask what this means and how much “extra time” is involved. She tells me (again, very politely and very helpfully) that they’re overwhelmed and activation may take 24 hours. Nice planning, AT&T. I head off to bed, dreaming of 12 shiny icons on a black glass screen.

In the morning, I find an e-mail stamped 6:46 a.m. that tells me my activation is complete. Woohoo! I’m in iPhone heaven!

Part 2: What I find good and bad about the iPhone, and why AT&T tells me I have to give up my phone number. Portability — yeah, right.

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-1/feed/6Tomhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/my-miserable-iphone-experience-part-1/City of Heroes Movie in the Workshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/w8FL3D8sy7Q/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/city-of-heroes-movie-in-the-works/#respondThu, 21 Jun 2007 02:50:37 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/city-of-heroes-movie-in-the-works/There’s no escaping the fact that I’m a geek. I spend enormous amounts of time on the computer. I love tech gadgets. I play videogames. I read comic books.

The upside of all this is that I can get pretty excited about relatively minor announcements when they involve one or more of my geeky pasttimes. Like the news that Transformers producer Tom DeSanto is looking to develop a movie based on City of Heroes, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

This is awesome. I realize that it’s years off and may never happen. But I’ve spent countless hours in Paragon City fighting crime and would love to see it brought to life on the big screen.

I think the premise could make a great film. For those of you who have never played, the game takes place in Paragon City, a city on the eastern seaboard with a long history of super-powered vigilantes. It’s reeling from a devastating alien invasion. Various villainous organizations are looking to do whatever villainous organizations do. In response, the Paragon City has opened its doors to heroes from all over — come to town, register with City Hall and you’re a licensed vigilante. I hope the city’s premier supergroup, the Freedom Phalanx (made up of heroes created by the CoH development team), will find its way into the film.

I’ve played a few other MMORPGs but never stick with them. For whatever reason, I’ve had better luck making friends and building relationships in CoH than in other games. Anytime I log on, I can count on running into at least a handful of people that I team up with regularly and hang out with.

If you haven’t tried City of Heroes, you should check it out. Look me up sometime as JohnnyFlux or Dr. Nightshade. Or the Fiery Mass. Or Chill McFreeze. Rex Danger. Jake Justice. Crush Biggs. Or…

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/city-of-heroes-movie-in-the-works/feed/0TomDr. Nightshade vs. the Clockwork Kinghttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/city-of-heroes-movie-in-the-works/Bland Pippen Mansion Sells at a Losshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/EIJa557yKgk/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/bland-pippen-mansion-sells-at-a-loss/#respondWed, 20 Jun 2007 05:27:11 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/bland-pippen-mansion-sells-at-a-loss/The real estate market in Portland is crazy. When I moved here, I was looking at places that had appreciated 1,000% in the last five to ten years. It’s out of control.

Then I come across an article saying that somehow, former basketball player Scottie Pippen managed to lose about a million bucks on a place he’d owned more than 6 years. Yikes.

It’s becomes less puzzling when you take a look at the place. I’m certainly not living in an opulent gated estate here, but take a look at this place. Maybe it’s just me but that looks like the most bland, character-less place I’ve ever seen.

Bleh. $4 million? A fool and his money, I guess.

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/bland-pippen-mansion-sells-at-a-loss/feed/0Tomhttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/bland-pippen-mansion-sells-at-a-loss/Apple’s Safari Comes to Windowshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/portlanded/~3/lST3ekrqVNs/
https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/apples-safari-comes-to-windows-viruses-to-follow/#respondTue, 12 Jun 2007 00:06:17 +0000http://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/apples-safari-comes-to-windows-viruses-to-follow/Today at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs gave us a rundown of the features in Leopard — again.

Overall, the event was a little disappointing. It’s not that I’m not excited about Leopard. Some new features were discussed and the new Mac OS X certainly looks like a fantastic upgrade, but we’d already seen most of this.

But Steve’s “one more thing” was interesting — Safari 3 was available immediately as a public beta, and it was available for Mac and Windows. Knowing that this was coming, I imagine Steve must have been anxiously awaiting the right opportunity to make his “giving ice water to people in hell” comment about iTunes for Windows.

Safari for Windows makes a lot of sense. If the iPhone is going to run Safari and only support third party apps via web 2.0 and AJAX technologies (a major disappointment), there’s a lot of potential upside. Broader adoption of Safari means better support by web developers; Apple fans then get a more consistent browsing experience whether they’re using a Mac, a PC or an iPhone. There are still times when I can’t use Safari (like in WordPress.com’s visual post editor right now).

Personally, I was just excited to see the Safari 3 beta. I’ve already installed it on my Mac and Windows machines and it’s pretty impressive. This version closes some significant gaps with Firefox and passes it by in some places. Finally, I can reorder the tabs in my browser — or just pull a tab off and create a new window, something I can’t do in Firefox.

Safari 3 also provides a decent Find command. The new Find now highlights all items on the page, like Firefox; visually, I think I like the Safari Find better. (Major Safari 3 letdown — I couldn’t locate any .Mac settings on the Windows version so my bookmarks there will continue to be out of sync with my other machines.)

It really doesn’t matter whether someone prefers Safari or Firefox, however. What matters is that the number of Windows browsers that are far better than IE7 just increased by one. Between Firefox, Opera and now Safari, I can’t imagine why anyone would use IE7 at all. And that’s probably the plan — increase the alternatives and push developers away from Windows-only, IE-only technologies for their sites.

One other thing did occur to me, though. The debate over whether Mac OS X is really more virus-proof than Windows — or whether it’s merely ignored by hackers thanks to its small market share — isn’t going to get resolved without a major upheaval in the OS market.

But this Apple move may give us some insight into the question by letting us compare each company’s approach to security more directly. Internet Explorer has long been plagued by security issues. Now Safari is available, running side-by-side with IE on the same Windows platform. Will we see the same kinds of problems?I don’t think so. Of course, Safari will need to grab a reasonable share of Windows users before we can draw any conclusions. If they do, we might be able to finally decide whether Mac vs. Windows security is really about market share or if it’s just about Microsoft.

]]>https://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/apples-safari-comes-to-windows-viruses-to-follow/feed/0TomSafari on Windowshttps://portlanded.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/apples-safari-comes-to-windows-viruses-to-follow/